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Cedric Savarese is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at FormAssembly. Cedric has been at the helm of FormAssembly, responsible for the company’s strategic direction and growth, since it’s inception in 2006. Prior to starting FormAssembly ,Cedric worked in various roles in IT for more than 10 years in the U.S. and France. He graduated from the Université Paris Descartes with masters in computer science, and currently resides in Bloomington, Indiana.

Efficient data collection is integral to running a successful business. From marketing and sales to human resources and finance, most business functions need to collect, store and manage critical information to be successful.

Paper forms are still extremely common and they are difficult to keep a track of, inefficient and costly. According to The Paperless Project and a study conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), printed forms cost U.S. companies more than $120 billion annually. That said, building electronic forms to replace paper forms is no easy task. Manually building forms and integrating them with back-end systems can take weeks, and if done incorrectly can introduce nightmarish security and privacy vulnerabilities.

To save valuable time and money and improve security, organizations should consider an advanced web form automation solution. These can be instrumental in implementing robust and flexible data collection processes, often in an order of magnitude faster than ad-hoc development projects. Such a solution can be a powerful tool for companies looking to easily ensure that their data collection is compliant with industry regulations and safeguard the valuable data they acquire.

For example, the marketing and sales team in an organization can easily create and manage forms on their website for newsletter signups, content downloads, or even demo requests, therefore generating better quality leads. They can then connect those forms directly to other solutions like Salesforce so that leads go right into their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, thus enabling the sales team to reduce the time it takes to turn a lead into a customer.

For human resources (HR), the use of online forms can help save a considerable amount of time when screening candidates. Also, they can be instrumental in streamlining internal processes such training programs, time-off requests, and even employee reviews.

Finance teams can use web forms for easily managing day-to-day budget and travel reimbursement requests, vendors, invoicing, as well as purchase orders.

Here are a few real-world examples of enterprises across e-commerce, pharmaceutical, and nonprofit sectors that demonstrate the value that automated forms can bring to a business:

Amazon India

Amazon India’s seller success team uses an automated form-builder for developing customer and seller surveys to drive targeted marketing campaigns. The biggest advantage they see is the ease with which they are able to create forms for various purposes. What’s more, they no longer need to spend time in training people, as the process of building a form is self-explanatory and very user-friendly.

Aetna

Aetna Pharmacy Management, a full-service benefits manager of prescription drug insurance, uses Salesforce as its CRM system. Before using an online form solution, Aetna’s team had to manually enter the data collected into their CRM. This was tedious and extremely time intensive. Therefore, to improve efficiency and eliminate any human error, Aetna decided to implement an automated form solution. The company now uses multiple Web-to-Case forms and account management surveys with prefilled fields, so that updating records is a smooth and simple process.

Polaris

Polaris is a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting human trafficking across the world. It supports survivors and actively combats modern slavery through a number of programs, including global hotlines, advisory services, data analysis, and government relations. Additionally, it runs the U.S.-based National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) and the Global Modern Slavery Directory, a collective map for service providers working against human trafficking and related issues around the world. The team uses Salesforce across a number of different departments for key processes.

Polaris gathers information from a variety of stakeholders, for different uses, purposes, and goals across the organization. They needed a centralized system for collecting lots of different types of information and passing the right data to the right place in Salesforce. Today, the organization extensively uses an automated form builder for maintaining directory listings for service providers, collecting product feedback, and conducting training surveys to improve resource quality and efficacy.

Choosing the Right Form Solution for Your Organization

The right data collection and management solution can be instrumental in the success of an organization. Even though there are several solutions available, finding the right one for your business is easy if you keep a few things in mind.

When choosing a form builder, find something that is plug and play, so that you can easily create multiple forms right from your browser and integrate them with key systems you use seamlessly, for instance, Salesforce, Google Apps or Wordpress. Building something from scratch can be daunting and extremely time-consuming with the wrong tool.

It’s also important to find a solution that is rich with customizable features and functionality. For example, look for a solution that uses conditional logic and offers calculated fields.

Finally, security and compliance are of utmost importance when dealing with sensitive and personally identifiable information. Find a solution that has strong security and privacy practices, supported by certifications and compliance with standards set by HIPAA, GDPR or PCI.

Following these simple steps can enable you to find the right data capture and management tool for your business, enabling improved efficiencies, compliance, and data accuracy.